Creating base mesh for character

Now was time to make the almighty blockout for my Uncle Sam.
I started off by first making a simple top hat in Maya and importing it into Zbrush.

In Zbrush I went into the mannequin section and chose the standard male. I then went and posed him into the position I wanted, once done I skinned him which gave him a fully body skin which I could then work on. Since I was still fairly new to Zbrush I found it hard sculpting in the detail so the character was very skinny but lumpy in some places, I felt he resembled a clay man you'd see been made in a school by a child, so I had that going for me. I sculpted in the blazer and used the mask tool to try and pull out the blazer from the rest of the body, I found this quite hard as it seemed to always blend back into one. 

I then tried the same method with the trousers only really using the claybuild up brush and going in between subdivision levels to get the detail.

Here is a fully body shot of the body posed from the front and behind. Just from this even though it is very rough you can already begin to get a sense of what's going to happen.

 And here is a close up shot of the blazer, it is very rough but you do get a basic idea.

I then went to do the head, I used the one from the previous semester so I can quickly sculpt in the bead and hair. I did this the same way I did the body, not going into any real detail but just filling in the large portions to get the overall silhouette done. 

This is what he looked like in the end, no real work done on the actual face, but I sculpted in the beard and the hair, I left the top as this is covered by the top hat. Once it was done I placed it onto the shoulder and made it look like it was one mesh

I then went to work on the hands, I went into the mannequin section and found a hand which I could move about, so I shaped it into the finger point and then placed it on the hand of my body. I didn't bother skinning it or adding detail as there would be no point because I getting the pose done was more than enough just at blockout stage. I also didn't bother doing the other hand as this would barely be seen and would be more of a waste of time that it would be worth.

Here is the full body with top hat, head and hand. This is more than enough for blockout stage and you get the idea that it is Uncle Sam. 

Now to place it into UE4 with the scene and create the cinematic. 

Looking at it again after the presentation and doing this blog, it kind of scares me and I find it kind of creepy. Lets hope it isn't like this for the final outcome HA!